I've got X2 installed and have *tried* to use it for PDF editing. It works, but not nearly as well as a dedicated PDF application. As Chris, notes, it lacks flexibilty. The few times I've tried using it to edit pdfs, I've wound up switching to Scansoft PDF Converter Pro.

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Is that the Nuance one? I seem to remember someone complaining about problems with it? Have you compared it with Able2Extract?

Er... yes, to the first two points! And I've complained about it from time to time - but then it usually comes down to me complaining about something! I've got it running very smoothly, now. THere is a system wide glitch with it under XP that took me YEARS to solve (I was looking in other places for the fault - realised where fault lay when I uninstalled PDFCP a while back) - certain programs default to (in my case) displaying titles, taskbar titles, and open and save dialogs in Korean (or some other language, presumably, on other systems). Works BRILLIANTLY under Vista, though.

Haven't had a chance to look at Able2Extract, yet. Will do so soon (deadlines to meet today).

Just had a look at the developer's product comparison table - AFAICT, Nuance's PDF Converter Professional 5 (wish they'd do a matrix on one page) is much more feature rich, comes in one package and, as a result, is much cheaper. You can get PDFC Pro 5 for $99 (there's an Enterprise version with even more features for $149) - if you pay full price (usually not necessary) and it does everything on that table. To approximate the feature set of PDFC Pro, you'd need to buy both Sonic PDF Creator ($174.95) and Able2Extract Professional ($129).

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Darwin, do you know if the PDF converter Pro has any advantages over Omnipage? - I had the impression that the Converter functionality might be a subset of the tools of the omnipage package. I would certainly give it a try if there are some extras.

Well... PDF Converter Professional can do a number of things, such as make a pdf searchable, allow you to modify and move blocks of text and pictures around, encrypt pdfs, etc. I actually have Omnipage as well, it will certianly do some of these things, but not as easily or as conveniently. I'm not an Omnipage power user by any stretch, so others may be able to provide more insight.

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Well... what's worse about Nuance (unless they've changed their tune of late) is that they won't let you run a trial of their software - you MUST buy it. The upside is that they've got a generous 90 day no questions asked return policy, which I have used without fanfare or drama twice. BTW, they should have most of their stuff on sale over the next two months - you might want to hold off in anticipation of that...

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Well... what's worse about Nuance (unless they've changed their tune of late) is that they won't let you run a trial of their software - you MUST buy it.

I admit I did that with Instant Text, and haven't regretted it (other than wishing I had it ten years ago).

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The upside is that they've got a generous 90 day no questions asked return policy, which I have used without fanfare or drama twice.

Twice???

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BTW, they should have most of their stuff on sale over the next two months - you might want to hold off in anticipation of that...

If I can: my hand may be forced. Do Nuance routinely have a winter discount? Price is $99 as of this morning. Unless you visit their UK site, in which case the price is £99, about $147

I took a very quick look at a couple of their videos, but couldn't see what I was looking for. Does the program have an editor-style search-and-replace, or would one have to work on every repeated text object separately? In the latter case, it would probably be better to convert to Word .DOC.

BTW, they should have most of their stuff on sale over the next two months - you might want to hold off in anticipation of that...

...Does the program have an editor-style search-and-replace, or would one have to work on every repeated text object separately? In the latter case, it would probably be better to convert to Word .DOC.

In both cases I bought the software only to be offered large discounts at a later date, so I simply returned them and bought them again

RE: discounts, my experience is that they usually offer a discount around the middle/end of Decmeber. Often, this precedes a new release, but not every year. I guess you've nothing to lose, really - if you buy now and the sale DOES happen, you can pull my little stunt and return it, then buy at the discount!

Finally, in place text editing/search-and-replace... I'm going to test it now. I'll post back in a few minutes

UPDATE: AFAICT there is no replace feature. However, you can both Find and Search throughout a document - Find functions more or less like Find in Word while Search reports back with a list of all occurences of the search term:

Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

In both cases I bought the software only to be offered large discounts at a later date, so I simply returned them and bought them again

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UPDATE: AFAICT there is no replace feature. However, you can both Find and Search throughout a document - Find functions more or less like Find in Word while Search reports back with a list of all occurences of the search term:

Thanks for checking! Find sounds helpful. At least you can easily get to the next point where you need to make a change. There's nothing like that (AFAICS) in the current version of the Foxit PDF Editor. Sounds like Search is like a grep.

Just to chip in - I have used Serif PagePlus X3 for editing some fairly complex PDFs (CAD drawings, forms with images, etc) and have found it to work extremely well. I think there's a trial version and there's normally discounts available from various sources.

Thanks for posting that, Mike. I just gave my copy of PagePlusX2 a shot and it does have a very nice find and replace function. Almost makes me regret not jumping at the $29 upgrade to X3 I was offered recently! I"m going to play around with X2 some more - I've only test it with a pdf I generated from a text file - and report back here

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

FWIW...1 thing to remember when talking about, rating, trying PDF conversion &/or editing software, is that there are several ways, programs to create PDFs now days -- the PDFs created are not always the same internally. What works for PDFs created in one program might fail miserably on the output of another. There are quite a few cheaper PDF conversion programs out, but in my experience how well they work, or if they work at all depends on what created the PDF you feed them. A few examples with ratings/comments for Quick-PDF [http://www.quick-pdf.com/] can be found here [http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/category/quick-pdfcom/].

FWIW RE: Serif...AFAIK -- & from what I can recall (which may not be *totally* accurate) -- Serif was started years & years ago by Russian coders going up against Adobe & quite possibly Aldus (it was that long ago) (assuming anyone else is old enough to remember Aldus). They had excellent products, but not a lot of marketing clout in a then very closed-minded publishing & graphics arts community, where it was felt your professional credibility rested on the price of your tools, not your results. I think they then started licensing code or collaborating on niche products like a vector-based Dinosaur Drawing program one of my boys used back in a grade school project, eventually I believe turning over marketing (or selling themselves?) to one of the mass marketers similar to Broderbund. Their initial DTP program was dumbed down a little to compete with the brand new Microsoft Publisher, over the years becoming the PagePlus discussed here. You'll usually find deals on their software on various shareware &/or PC magazine sites like vnunet, at software surplus sites, at discount PC parts & accessory sites, & sometimes in the cheap software racks in retail stores.

@rjbull - I received an offer on PDF Converter Professional 5 today - $69.95. PM me if you'd like more information.

On other fronts, I wrote and thought I had posted a brief update on Serif PagePlus X2. Can't see/find it anywhere, so must be further down the path to senility than I thought

At any rate, PP X2 is quite nice WRT its PDF editing capabilities. However, there are a couple of limitations that I'd like to highlight (though admittedly they are probably more related to entrenched perceptions of how things should be done on my part, thanks to years of working with first Adobe Acrobat and then the Scansoft/Nuance offerings):

1. I can see no way to scroll though a document a la Word procesor (and yes, I am aware that PP X2 is NOT a Word processor ). True, one can view pages tiled across the work space, but this is not the same thing.2. Unless one has an OCR application installed, there is no way that you can open a pdf that has been generated from image files together and edit the text. This is a serious limitation for many PDF editing applications.

Just my two bits.

I like PagePlus X2, but am much happier using PDFCP 5 to edit PDFs....

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

PS to rjbull - should have noted that you can often pick up boxed versions of Nuance apps in places like Staples cheaper than the on-line discounts. I paid $79.95 US for the upgrade from PDFCP 4 to 5, having missed the opportunity to buy it for $79 Cdn. at Staples. At the time the Cdn. dollar was around parity so I didn't really care, and suspect that I saved a bit because I didn't have to pay any taxes on the download version! Besides, it's the "green" thing to do - who needs CDs/DVDs and all the packaging. But still...

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Last week I recall Amazon.com and Buy.com advertising PDF Converter Professional 5 for about $62 shipped. Newegg has a downloadable version for $64.99. Prices seem to fluctuate often. The documentation indicates this product uses online activation. I am trying to decide between this product and Acrobat 9 Standard which I can get as an upgrade for $99.

Last week I recall Amazon.com and Buy.com advertising PDF Converter Professional 5 for about $62 shipped. Newegg has a downloadable version for $64.99. Prices seem to fluctuate often. The documentation indicates this product uses online activation. I am trying to decide between this product and Acrobat 9 Standard which I can get as an upgrade for $99.

There you go! Can't really comment on the PDFCP vs Adobe Acrobat Std issue, though... My vague understanding is that PDFCP is roughly equivalent to Acrobat Standard, but I could be wrong about that. I no longer have any idea what features are included in what versions of Acrobat, so...

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

I went ahead and pulled the trigger on PDF Converter Professional. Bought it as a downloadable copy from Newegg.com for $64.99 plus today only (while funds last) they have a 15% back offer if you pay using PayPal. You would get the credit sometime in January.

PS to rjbull - should have noted that you can often pick up boxed versions of Nuance apps in places like Staples cheaper than the on-line discounts.

We do have Staples in the UK, but I hardly ever get to places like that. In fact I think I'd more or less forgotten about buying software from a retail outlet, expecting everything to be done online, and certainly anything worthwhile.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll try to make a detour next time I'm anywhere near a Staples, just to see what's on offer.